Shallow, clothes-oriented post

Today I'm wearing all greens and yellows--a spring green tight tee-shirt (with no bra), a short (mid-thigh) spring green and yellow skirt with a cut-off hem, yellow sandals, my yellow Baby G watch, my chartreuse beaded mecklace and a splash of different color--my blue star earrings. Eyes lined in teal and blue, nude lipstick.

And no hose today. For one thing, I tanned on Tuesday night; for another, with this outfit, I can go without. It's fitting.

I seem to have dropped a size between the time I bought the skirt (early last week) and today. When I walked to work this morning, my skirt was slipping around my waist; I kept having to yank it back in place. I've been trying to eat better this week--trying (it's very difficult for me) to cut out refined sugar and eat more protein. I guess it's working--I don't particularly want to lose weight but I'd like to feel better about my diet. I eat a lot of crap. A lot of sugar and fat and alcohol. But last night, naked in Times Square, I felt pretty good about my body.

"The Whitsun Weddings"

While reading slate.com, I came across an article about Philip Larkin, and eventually followed links to reread my favorite Larkin poem, "The Whitsun Weddings."

That Whitsun, I was late getting away:
Not till about
One-twenty on the sunlit Saturday
Did my three-quarters-empty train pull out,
All windows down, all cushions hot, all sense
Of being in a hurry gone. We ran
Behind the backs of houses, crossed a street
Of blinding windscreens, smelt the fish-dock; thence
The river's level drifting breadth began,
Where sky and Lincolnshire and water meet.

( Read more... )

There we were aimed. And as we raced across
Bright knots of rail
Past standing Pullmans, walls of blackened moss
Came close, and it was nearly done, this frail
Travelling coincidence; and what it held
stood ready to be loosed with all the power
That being changed can give. We slowed again,
And as the tightened brakes took hold, there swelled
A sense of falling, like an arrow-shower
Sent out of sight, somewhere becoming rain.

That last phrase makes me want to cry. It is so beautiful. Like an arrow-shower/Sent out of sight... I have a picture of these golden arrows shot into the air, arcing across the sky, trailing a golden path...and then fading and morphing into water, to rain upon the sleeping city. Oh. I can't bear it. Poetry is diamond-cutting and mosaic-making and stone-fence-building and gold-panning, all at the same time--the endless turning over of word after word after word in the search for the perfect word, to create a concentrated world within a line, a verse, a poem.

I read this poem at a variety show at St. Andrew's several years ago--they'd asked me to sing something and knowing there would be a lot of other singers there, I asked to read this instead. Afterward so many parishioners came up to me, asking me about it.

I'm goin' to a Yankees game!

Oh, excitement!

The benefits administrator at Atrium just called--she got two Yankees tickets from the HIP representative and wanted to give them to a temp who's on HIP. She asked around the office and "it was unanimous"--they all recommended me.

My mom and I are going to the Yankees game on Tuesday! And they're playing Baltimore, which means we even know the other team, and I used to play Little League!

We're going to the Yankees game!